Generated coins cannot be used in transactions until they have at least 100 confirmations (but the official client won't let you until it has 120 for some reason). So, unless you do some magic with the payouts, you have to wait at least 100 confirmations until a pool can pay its rewards for this block.

This has nothing to do with transactions, which requires far less confirmations.

And, by the way, confirmations have nothing to do wrt. invalids and orphans. If you somewhat generate a better blockchain which forked 200 blocks ago, you can orphan 200 blocks at once (even the 80 "confirmed" ones). (To some extent, since the official client hardcodes some hashes in the early blockchain.) This is of course very unlikely to happen.

bitcoins.lc also pays out immediately. It's just a matter of the pool having more than 50 btc in reserve funds so they can pay out early - so your pool can't be smalltime. If I was a pool I would probably wait 3 confirmations though... just in case someone else mined at exactly the same time and your block ended up being orphaned.

We have both instant payout (without any 120/100 confirmations) and pays for invalid blocks (orphans).We have a reserved amount of bitcoins ready for handling both orphan blocks and having that 50 btc "buffer". This comes from a combination of generous donations and my own wallet

This way, you'll always be 100% sure that you'll get paid for your work, even if our network/peers are to slow to distribute your work - and the block becomes orphan.

We have both instant payout (without any 120/100 confirmations) and pays for invalid blocks (orphans).We have a reserved amount of bitcoins ready for handling both orphan blocks and having that 50 btc "buffer". This comes from a combination of generous donations and my own wallet

This way, you'll always be 100% sure that you'll get paid for your work, even if our network/peers are to slow to distribute your work - and the block becomes orphan.